American Indians, the Irish, and Government Schooling: A Comparative Study (review)

Over the last decade, scholars in such diverse disciplines as history, sociology, anthropology, and English literature have begun to promote a comparative approach in their studies of empire and its effects on native populations. They have done so not only to escape exceptionalist narratives, but also to provide further insights into imperialism on a global scale. David Harding and Katie Kane, for example, have drawn fruitful links between American and British colonization of American Indian and Irish peoples. This comparative approach has proven especially productive in the study of colonial education,where such scholars as Ann Laura Stoler and Margaret Connell Szasz have compared American Indian education to schooling in the Dutch East Indies and Scotland, respectively.

In American Indians, the Irish, and Government Schooling: A Comparative Study, the first work from the University of Nebraska Press's new Indigenous Education series, Michael C. Coleman builds on these works and on his own earlier articles on the subject to offer the first book-length comparison of Irish and American Indian education. Using an array of sources—including photographs, government and school records, and particularly autobiographies from the schoolchildren involved—he compares the government-sponsored educational projects of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and Commissioners of National Education in Ireland (CNEI) that aimed to assimilate American Indians and Irish peoples between the 1830s and the 1920s.

Coleman acknowledges the differences between the two projects. Few Irish children were compelled to attend remote boarding schools, unlike American Indian children, and although BIA employees consistently proselytized to Native children, the CNEI forbade such religious endeavors. In addition, because the majority of CNEI's schoolteachers and inspectors were Irish, their projects were less likely to condemn or to cast Irish traditions and customs as Other. This differs dramatically from BIA attempts to eradicate diverse American Indian cultures. Coleman's overarching argument, however, is that—despite these disparities—the two endeavors share fundamental similarities. By the 1930s, there was a convergence in terms of the projects' impacts and the responses of parents; by that point, the majority of Irish and American Indian children who attended these schools, and most parents, had accepted mass education to an extent—although never to the levels that government agents sought. Coleman contends that while both ventures failed to achieve the reformers' assimilationist expectations, they still had a resounding impact on those indigenous nations and individuals involved.

By comparing the policies of the respective governments and the responses of the American Indians and the Irish, Coleman problematizes existing narratives about indigenous education, both by illustrating Irish and American Indian schooling's "distinct but unexceptional nature" and by demonstrating the complexity of these projects and their results. In the first two chapters, he briefly examines pre-1820s education for American Indians and Irish and the educational policies of the American and British governments from the early nineteenth century to the early twentieth century. The next six chapters focus on the "complex interaction between assimilationist educational policy and reality on the ground." These chapters discuss a wide range of topics: local responses to the schooling; the school regimes; curriculums; teaching and school staff; peer relationships, pupil resistance to and rejection of the projects; and, finally, the immediate and long-term results of the educational efforts. Coleman particularly brings a new perspective to the familiar argument of the agency of the peoples involved in these projects. Although he cautions against "over-empowering" and romanticizing the school children and their communities, Coleman does argue that empowerment is a recurring feature of these projects, expressed through native resistance and also "accommodating to and manipulating the system," especially through non-attendance.

Coleman contends that a symbiotic relationship existed between the educators and the educated.While stressing that the educators held the power in this relationship, the author convincingly illustrates that these projects did not imply a one-way flow. Irish and American Indian students depended on teachers for their learning, which...